10/31/2006

"I couldn't forget those moving scenes, blood and severed limbs, women and children sprawled everywhere. Houses destroyed along with their occupants and high rises demolished over their residents, rockets raining down on our home without mercy... And as I looked at those demolished towers...it entered my mind that we should punish the oppressor in kind." -- Osama Bin Laden, November 1, 2004.

"The enemy killed innocent men, women, and children. They filmed the atrocities, and they broadcast them for the world to see. Our enemies hope these violence images will cause us to lose our nerve and pull out before the job is done. They don't understand the United States of America. We will not run from thugs and assassins." -- George W. Bush, October 30 2006

There's a great scene in the John Woo film Face/Off where the two main characters are on opposite sides of a two-sided mirror after a massive shoot-out. The hero has had an operation where he has been given the face of the villain. In turn, the villain has taken the face of the hero. They are longtime foes, the villain having killed the son of the hero. After talking for a moment amid the broken glass and smoke, they both leap up and face the mirror. In essence, they are staring at the face of the person they hate most in the world, but, because of the operations, they are also staring at themselves. They still fire away at the mirror.

10/30/2006

Lynne Loves Labias:Wolf Blitzer has interviewed Lynne Cheney repeatedly on one of her bullshit books or the other. Each time, Blitzer has made clear that he was gonna get political with her and not just press his fuzzy face to her inner thighs and make soft cooing noises. On November 14, 2004, here's Blitzer saying that they were gonna talk about Dick Cheney's attempt to fool us into thinking he had a heart: "You also have a new book, When Washington Crossed the Delaware, that we're going to talk about, as well. But everyone wants to know, how is the vice president doing?" After a lengthy conversation about the health of Dick, abortion politics, and more, Blitzer came back from a break and said, "We'll get to the book in a second. A quick follow-up to one comment you made after the last debate between John Kerry and President Bush." Which was, of course, about Cheney's daughter, lesbian Mary.

And Lynne Cheney gladly spouted Republican talking point after Republican talking point, never batting her evil eyes at Blitzer's questions. On December 18, 2005, the script between Blitzer and Cheney was the same: "You're here to talk about your new book, A Time For Freedom, and we're going to talk about the book. Let's talk about some of the issues on the agenda right now."

So, you know, fuck Cheney for acting offended last Friday when Blitzer asked her not just about politics in general, but about the instance of campaign savagery done by Virginia Republican George Allen on Democrat James Webb that directly involved the Second Lady (short version: Allen says Webb writes dirty books; Webb says so does Cheney, among others). And fuck all the right-wing shit-scrawlers who think that Blitzer "blindsided" Cheney or that the CNN host "ambushed" her. But, then again, considering the consequences of invading Iraq, perhaps when something absolutely predictable happens, conservatives call it being "blindsided."

Besides, the lesbian-riffic material in the writing of Lynne Cheney doesn't begin and end with her novel, Sisters, which, and everyone on the religious right knows it whether they wanna admit it or not, probably ended up turning Mary Cheney into a muff diver. C'mon, back in 1981, Mary's an adolescent girl, thinking about exploring her sexuality, and she reads Mom's book where two women secretly enjoy labial pleasures with each other. Well, what was Sisters if not a nod and a wink to Lynne's budding daughter.

According to Cheney, regarding supposedly sexless female friendships in the book, "[S]he also knew that claiming a relationship was not erotic, thinking it could not be, would not keep it from being so. Oh, doubtless such convictions dictated limits one could not go beyond without without destroying the myth. There could be no tearing off one's clothes and lustily hopping into bed, not if one would preserve the love-religion. But the loving words and the warm embrace were permitted, and the kiss before sleep, the arousal gentle enough so that its nature would not have be acknowledged."

Beyond Sisters, though, Cheney's children's books are rife with amoral sexual overtones. When not celebrating sexual suspect Emily Dickinson in A Is for Abigail, there's the pro-miscegenation picture of Pocahantas with her hands all over the shoulders of John Smith in America: A Patriotic Primer. And let's not get into how approvingly Cheney talks about Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, no strangers to the joys of clam-eating. Or the disturbing picture of a what looks like a small white child buggering a small black child near a water fountain under the ironic heading, "Equality."

Perhaps in Lynne Cheney's world, as a right-wing insider of great import to the movement, as a politician full of self-denial, proclaiming to Blitzer that her novel is not sexual, actively working to destroy her daughter's life even as she declares love for her, that is what passes for equality.

10/27/2006

Queering the Election:Well, at least we'll get to find out if the issue has any traction anymore. When the New Jersey Supreme Court decided, in one of those so-easy-it's-dumb kinds of rulings, that homosexuals are entitled to the same legal rights as heterosexuals under our Constitution, which pretty much says you can't dick over one group when it comes to rights, it was obviously milk and treacle from Jesus's blessed wounds for the suckling Christian right. And Karl Rove's gonna ram this up our asses with the kind of force that would have made his beloved stepfather's prostate quiver in delighted expectation.

Here's Bush, campaigning for Jeff Lamberti in Iowa: "Dave [sic] and I believe a lot of things. We believe that you ought to keep more of your own money. We believe in family values. We believe values are important. And we believe marriage is a fundamental institution of civilization." Christ, why does everything have to be about a battle for civilization with these people? Ever been to the Castro in San Francisco? One of the most civilized goddamned places on the planet (except for certain clubs on Saturday nights, where barbarism is encouraged). Oh, by the way, Bush called Jeff Lamberti "Dave" a couple of times in his speech.

Bush continued, "Yesterday in New Jersey, we had another activist court issue a ruling that raises doubts about the institution of marriage. I believe that marriage is a union between a man and a woman, and I believe -- (applause) -- and I believe it's a sacred institution that is critical to the health of our society and the well-being of families, and it must be defended. And I'm looking forward to working with Jeff Lamberti to do just that. (Applause.)" And after all the applause and hugging and tears, the gathered Iowans looked at each other awkwardly, wondering if they were actin' kinda gay. And then wondering if they minded.

Yep, even though married gay people didn't start a war based on lies, didn't balloon the deficit, didn't approve really homoerotic torture for detainees, you gotta know they're the greatest threat to this nation. The Family Research Council is giddy with anticipation of tossing gay bodies to the hungry evangelicals, ready to devour some queer meat on the way to the voting booths. 'Cause, see, the unelected judges in New Jersey are just begging for a confrontation with Churchy. FRC President Tony Perkins writes in his Action Update (which, strangely, is the name of the Rude Pundit's favorite gay sex newsletter), "In its opinion, the court indicates that a confrontation with the church is near. 'However the Legislature may act,' the majority writes, 'same-sex couples will be free to call their relationships by the name they choose and sanctify their relationships in religious ceremonies in houses of worship.' The court is already working to strip marriage of any meaning, and now it looks to foist its counterfeit on the church."

Perkins then asks, "Will we soon see this same 'discrimination' as grounds to force homosexuality on our houses of worship?" 'Cause that argument has gotten women in the priesthood in the Catholic Church so far. Logic doesn't matter here. What matters is to get the baboons of the base screeching and jumping.

And, oh, how candidates who need major distractions will yank this wedgie. George Allen, a man who loves to get macaca on his face, has already used it: speaking in Harrisonburg, Virginia, Allen said, "There is a clear difference here between me and my opponent – I support protecting marriage from judges who do not understand their role: to interpret the law, not invent the law. My opponent does not. My opponent says that this amendment would infringe upon the rights of ordinary Virginians, and he opposes it. This amendment does exactly what it says it does; it defines marriage as being between one man and one woman, and I’m for marriage between a man and a woman while my opponent is against it." And don't even ask him what if two male niggers want to get married.

Allen's already got a radio ad out that says of his opponent, "Jim Webb, Hillary Clinton and their liberal allies in Washington don’t want to give constitutional protection to traditional marriage. If they don’t share our values on something as basic as marriage, how can we trust them on any issue?" So because Reagan's Secretary of the Navy doesn't give a shit if gay people marry, he must want to give the baby Jesus a good shaking.

By the way, for pure bugfuck insanity, here's what Virginia state legislator Robert Hurt said about the decision: "As we contemplate the glorious anniversary of the surrender of Lord Cornwallis to George Washington on a Virginia battlefield 225 years ago, it is appalling to think that any state supreme court could render a decision that amounts to nothing more than judicial tyranny."

In this savage season, once the New Jersey Supreme Court decision came down, Karl Rove lit a bonfire in his backyard. He stripped down to his tightie-whities, painted his belly red, and danced madly, thanking the gods for the hate and stupidity of the American people.

10/26/2006

Jesus Disagrees With Michael J. Fox:What the fuck is Jesus saying in the beginning of an anti-stem cell research ad? The ad, put out by the incredibly badly named Missourians Against Human Cloning, is billed as an answer to the Michael J. Fox ad in support of Claire McCaskill for Senate. And it features actors Jim "I Scourge Myself at Home" Cavaziel and Patricia "Everybody Loves Blastocysts" Heaton, as well as St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Jeff Suppan and Arizona Cardinals QB Who the Fuck Cares Since They're 1-6. The ad is specifically targeting Amendment 2, which is to be voted on by Missourians, and which would allow stem cell research in Missouri.

It's kind of a bizarro world approach to the whole stem cell research debate. They're not protestin' about killin' babies. No, it's about stopping cloning embryos for research purposes, even though the amendment actually bans all types of cloning that might lead to a baby Limbaugh stalking the earth. So everywhere in Missouri and on the airwaves you see ads that call on the people of that state to "Stop Human Cloning," as if somewhere in Branson there was an unholy laboratory creating new Gatlin Brothers to replenish the dead ones.

But more importantly, what the fuck is Jesus saying? The ad starts with Jesus mumbling something like "You borrow a nash with a shack." Is it fuckin' Aramaic? Badly pronounced Spanish? The sports guys blab about some shit, about how awful it is that research actually takes time and money, Heaton talks about how painful it is for women to donate eggs (or, more appropriately, sell them), putting it in terms of how it'll tempt poor women to do it, and Jesus comes back (as he always does) to say, "Now you know. Don't do it." Man, Jesus says no, with that just-masturbated glaze in his eyes. And the crappy commercial for the idiotic group with a backwards ass cause ends, its pro-life motives cowardly hidden.

Somehow, it doesn't dispel the image of a shaking Michael J. Fox. Nor the image of the undulating flesh of Rush Limbaugh as he quivers and jiggles while mocking Fox.

10/25/2006

Live Vodka-Shot Blogging the President's News Conference:Time to take the bottle out of the freezer. The Rude Pundit's not fact-checkin' here. Leave that to Think Progress. This is just about seeing if Bush finishes before the Rude Pundit passes out.

10:30 - Why the hell is George W. Bush having another worthless goddamned press conference? He's like an adolescent boy who just discovered that jacking off makes him feel good, so he's gonna thwack that dick as often as he can get it up.

10:32 - He's opening with the bad news, which means he's gettin' it out of the way so he can say...wait for it...boo-yah, "success in Iraq" must happen.

10:34 - Aw, fuck, he's givin a history lesson on the war, blaming the Iraqis for fucking up when their country was shredded by some shockin' and awin'. Bush is saying that Iraqis didn't live up to the neocons mythical expectations. It's like listening to a guy who just fucked his secretary explain to his wife how he didn't fuck his secretary.

10:37 - "Americans have no intention...of standing in the crossfire between warring factions." And then the theme emerges: we aren't just staying the course, motherfuckers, we're as pliable as a moist clitoris.

10:42 - "I know the American people want to win" in Iraq. It's a well-worn question, but what is "winning"? What is victory?

10:44 - Bush ain't "satisfied" with the situation in Iraq. Umm, gee, motherfucker, didn't you put that souffle' in the oven? If it doesn't rise, it ain't our fault.

10:45 - Bush just promised to make sure more Americans are killed in Iraq. He hides it in the cloak of troop worship, but serial killers sometimes love their victims.

10:47 - Comparing Iraq to World War II: "This is a war against extremists and radicals who kill innocents" and a war against "an ideology," both of which, to Bush, are extraordinarily different than, say, fighting against the Jew-exterminating fascists of Germany.

10:49 - Oh, fuck, he's giving that creepy squint-smile. And he's off - acting like a phone psychic, predicting what people of the future will say about us. Apparently, "My mommy was blown-up in a worthless war" is not one of those things. Nor is "Boy, I'm glad we stopped using gasoline cars."

10:52 - He's already gone through every goddamn talking point. It's all repetition and shrinking variation from here on out.

10:53 - Ah, okay, so like, victory in Iraq is a government that can stand on its own and is an "ally" in the war on terror. So there's no victory if Iraq decides fuck you, imperialists, we'll take care of our own shit.

10:58 - "Benchmarks are not timetables" for the "sovereign" Iraqi government, Bush says. However, he continues, we will ask the Iraqis to tell us when they'll achieve certain goals. And, hey, fuck you, David.

11:18 - Wait, wait, wait, here. The Iraqi government is not "in a position" to look five or ten years into the future? Didn't Bush do that by saying what would happen if the United States left Iraq? Maybe it's not a hypothetical if Bush says he knows for sure.

11:20 - Maybe a Mark Foley costume with page boy handpuppet so one can stick one's hand up its ass and wiggle one's fingers inside.

11:25 - Wonder if that burrito place is open for lunch? A burrito'd soak up all this vodka.

11:26 - Bush says when he's on the campaign trail, at his events where everyone has been pre-screened, he sees support for Republicans. He sees "enthusiasm" among the "grass roots activists." And he agrees that electing a Congress has "national implications." Bully for him.

11:31 - What a cranky little pussy Bush is when it comes to follow-ups. And motherfucker is so paranoid about timetables.

11:34 - "People gotta trust elected leaders in order for democracy to work," and he thinks people ought to be held to account. Man, his heart ain't in it. This is like watching a forced march through a desert. Speaking of, time for a drink...

That's it. Got through a little over half a bottle. And we learned so much that we didn't know before, like...no...maybe...nah. Oh, shit, wait - he didn't mention 9/11, did he?

In Brief: The Real October Surprise - Gay Marriage Ruling in New Jersey:All over Left Blogsylvania, there's been aching suspicion about why the Bush administration has had an unsettling, pod-people-like calm about the upcoming midterms, with Karl Rove, as reported by the mainstream media, achieving a Zen-like state of smug optimism. Part of the insistent questioning is the paranoia induced by Republican electoral terrorism in the past; part of it is a very real possibility of something happening, either before (see Iran) or on election day (see Diebold).

The sinister genius of Karl Rove is that he knows the nutzoid base needs only a nudge to ramp up the hate and get out the vote. And he knows where that nudge is coming from this year, as it did in 2004, and it ain't even from him. Today, at 3 p.m., the New Jersey Supreme Court will announce whether or not the state constitution allows gay marriage. Chances are that gay Jersey boys are gonna get to be queens for a day, and, hey, that's cool, the only right thing to do, and it's gonna be manipulated into a battering ram by the Christian right that'd do the Vikings proud.

As Atrios said, the media will be going 24/7 with images of women kissing at Garden State altars. To counterprogram, the Democrats better be ready to show the public where Mark Foley buried alive pages who spurned his advances.

10/24/2006

Update: Michael J. Fox Will Fuck Republicans' Shit Up:Fox has also recorded ads for Democrats Ben Cardin of Maryland and Jim Doyle of Wisconsin. According to the Washington Post, "He has also made plans to appear at events for two Democrats, Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey and Tammy Duckworth, a candidate for Congress from Illinois."

C'mon, Limbaugh and the rest of you uber-right bags of douche. Fuck with Doc Hollywood.

Why Rush Limbaugh Ought to Be Force-Fed His Own Liposuctioned Fat, Part 979:Alas for Alex Keaton. Sigh for Marty McFly. Cry for whatever his Spin City character was named. Anyone with a heart, and a memory that goes back more than a couple of years, who watches the Michael J. Fox ad that supports Missouri Democrat Claire McCaskill for Senate will have that heart broken by the end. Through his rocking and shaking, Fox makes a simple plea to support McCaskill against Jim Talent, a proud member of Bush's ass harem, so that stem cell research might progress. Yeah, for the vast majority of of us, by dint of our humanity, no matter what our political stripes, no matter how we agree or disagree with the message, probably can't help but be moved by the ad.

Which, of course, leaves out Rush Limbaugh, whose only purpose on earth seems to be keeping big pharma in business, providing three hours of masturbation material for shut-in nutzoid conservatives - the kind who yank their scabby peckers and yowl in pain and glee whenever Rush farts his disgust at those who would stop the killing in Iraq, and making sure that Dominican child prostitutes get slapped in the thighs for a couple of seconds by his demi-erect Viagra-ed cock before he dribbles out a bit of spooge and screeches for drug mules to bring him more hillbilly heroin for his "back pain." And, of course, to eat heapin' bowls of 'nana pudding while sucking his cigar like it's Dick Cheney's, well, shit, dick.

Limbaugh said this about Fox: "[H]e was either off the medication or he was acting. He is an actor, after all." Strangely, Limbaugh didn't address the fact that whether Fox was on his meds or not, the actor still has Parkinson's, the disease that forced him to retire from being in front of the camera. But then again, if you down enough oxycontin, you generally are numb to everyone's pain, yours, Michael J. Fox's, or the pre-pubescent slave whores' of Santo Domingo.

Limbaugh added later in the show, after vaguely implying that he might be overstating things, "I have gotten a plethora of e-mails from people saying Michael J. Fox has admitted in interviews that he goes off his medication for Parkinson's disease when he appears before Congress or other groups as a means of illustrating the ravages of the disease."

Now, a Google and Lexis/Nexis search hasn't revealed where this admission by Fox might have come from. But the Rude Pundit did find a July 24, 2002 interview with the San Francisco Chronicle where Fox said that the meds give him dyskinesia. "The more L-dopa one takes, the more pronounced the dyskinesia. Timing the medication, Fox says, has become an important part of his routine."

Maybe "timing the medication" for Limbaugh is the same as "goes off his medication." It's sort of like the three hours Limbaugh can go between oxycontin-infused Gorditas, timing it with his show so that every day on the air is just another episode of plumbing the deviant depths of brief periods of withdrawal.

10/23/2006

The Amway Rhetoric of an Administration of Salesmen:The Rude Pundit was once friends with a guy whose father was an Amway salesman. In case you've never confronted Amway, the company gets people to sell their products, calling each salesperson an Individual Business Owner. Even though Amway sells online now, the real cash money used to be, at least, in suckering others to give up real jobs to waste a portion of their short lives trying to convince people that what they're selling is better than what you could get at the mall. Then, once you have minions who sell, you merely skim from their profits and, lo and behold, Amway says you could be rich. It requires a certain profligacy with bullshit for one to be remotely successful. It requires that one put aside any notions of soul or morality. And it requires one to be upbeat to an unreal point.

On the refrigerator of the friend's big house, the father had pictures of his life goals: a villa in Tuscany, a pool, a convertible Jaguar. Written on each magazine cut-out picture were phrases like, "You, George Dumbfuck, can own a house in Italy!" It was sad, really, the way the delusional nature of such dreams forced the Dumbfuck family to behave as if they actually had that kind of money. But it was part of their creepy, capitalistic, Christian-influenced optimism, the kind that'd make the Partridge Family think they themselves were suicidal mopes, and it led them, eventually, straight to financial catastrophe. Villa in Tuscany? Fuck, how about a small apartment in Alabama?

The relentless happy talk from the Bush administration has all the hallmarks of trying to convince people that they, too, can get rich if they sell Amway. Here's Bush on This Week With George Stephanopoulos's Hair: "I define success or failure as to whether or not the Iraqis will be able to defend themselves. I define success or failure as whether the unity government's making difficult — the difficult decisions necessary to unite the country. I define success or failure as whether schools are being built, or hospitals are being opened. I define success or failure as whether we're seeing a democracy grow in the heart of the Middle East." See, not being able to afford your mortgage is just a short-term problem - you shouldn't define your personal success in such base monetary terms. Selling those vitamins, though, that's a success.

The delusions continue to the point where you're not even allowed to speculate on failure. See, Daddy Dumbfuck couldn't allow himself to think that one day he might not have that Jag, that he might have to settle for the used Ford Focus. Because to admit that failure is a possibility is to give in to weakness that'll ensure your failure. So when Daddy Dumbfuck and Mommy Dumbfuck would sit around the kitchen counter, they'd only talk about how nice that pool's gonna look in the backyard.

It's like Bush's response to his father actually saying that he's thought about Democrats winning the Congress: "He shouldn't be speculating like this, because — he should have called me ahead of time and I'd tell him they're not going to." He hasn't thought about it, Bush, Jr. says, because it's not going to happen. We can parse that disturbing joviality against polls in lots of ways - the diabolical Diebold fear, the October Surprise, Saddam's verdict, Iran attack - but it's actually just an obstinate refusal to admit that they're not getting the good people of America to sell or buy Amway anymore.

The house may burn down around you, but it's just more important to make that next sale, to get your product loved, to draw others into the scheme. The Dumbfucks failed. Hell, everyone the Rude Pundit ever knew that sold Amway eventually failed. But they never blamed themselves for being stupid enough to do it in the first place.

10/20/2006

Christ Weary of Values Voters:Oh, now you know that the Christian right is going nutzoid. The Family Research Council (motto: "Feel the Warm Thrust of Christ's Mercy") sent out an e-mail saying that "Pundits from across the political spectrum are saying that values voters - people who base their electoral and ballot decisions on issues like traditional marriage, the sanctity of human life, and religious liberty - are few, or even a downright myth." Shit, FRC President Tony Perkins must be thinking at this point, they're onto us. Hell, he probably even looks up from James Dobson's crotch to tell the head of Focus on the Family the same thing.

So Perkins wants us to make a vow, a pledge, a petition, if you will, that they can e-mail to Ken Mehlman and Howard Dean. It reads: "As a values voter, I believe that there are no more important issues than those linked to values - the moral and social norms that keep our families strong and our nation united. Of all the issues with which government deals, none is as important today as affirming the sanctity of human life, protecting the institution of man-woman marriage, and safeguarding our heritage of religious liberty. A nation that does these things will be blessed with both security and economic well-being, as the history of our land has shown. I am proud to be counted as a values voter and to let you, the media and public officials know that these are the issues on which I stand." You can let the chairs of the major political parties know that you don't give a holy goddamn about the war in Iraq, the decaying civil rights of Americans, or the economy, as long as queers can't get married. Then, oh, yes, most certainly, all will be right with the world.

For his part, Dobson's gone bugfuck insane on the need to get out the values vote. It ain't just about the loss of the Congress. It's about state amendments barring gay unions. Says Dobson, a man whose combover defies several laws of physics, "If one of those states is lost — or two or three — it has serious implications for the future of the family. It means adoption laws will change. It means textbooks will all have to be rewritten to include man and man and woman and woman marriage." Heavens, you may say, not the textbooks. Anything but the textbooks. But Dobson's a little annoyed at all the haters out there: "I have never, ever seen such hatred in my life. I am being bludgeoned in the media. Why? Why now? Well, it's not really personal to me. But they identify me as one of the people who turned out the values voters last time – and they are determined to never, ever let it happen again." What is it about conservatives that they have to turn everything into about themselves as individuals? You can pretty much guarantee that very few people will go to the polls giving a happy monkey shit about James Dobson.

If that doesn't convince you, though, you can go to the fancy (and extremely slow-loading) website, ivotevalues.org. It's got a handy list of things that churches and pastors can and can't do to get their parishioners to answer the question, "How Would Jesus Vote?" And you can learn shocking things like the fact that the citizens in this country actually separate church and state in the voting booth: "Many believers fail to consider their biblical values when voting, often choosing candidates whose values are different than their own values, convictions, and beliefs. A recent study by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life shows that nearly two-thirds of Americans say their faith has little to do with their voting decisions."

Meanwhile, in heaven, Jesus is rolling his eyes, waving his arms, asking, "What the fuck? What about the poor, motherfuckers? The starving? Hello?"

10/19/2006

One Nation Under Bush:There's probably not a lot to add to Keith Olbermann's Special Comment last night on the President's signing of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, where Olbermann repeatedly called Bush a "liar" and seemed to stop just short of asking Dubya to step outside. But for an equally or even more intestine-grinding gut punch, check out Tuesday's Olbermann interview with Jonathan Turley on the same subject. Turley ain't a flame-spewing liberal (although, in these vicious times, anyone who even murmurs that the Bush administration has gone too far is proclaimed a flag burner). He told Olbermann, "[P]eople have no idea how significant this is. What, really, a time of shame this is for the American system. What the Congress did and what the president signed today essentially revokes over 200 years of American principles and values."

And then he smacked down the country for its laissez-who-gives-a-fuck attitude: "It couldn’t be more significant. And the strange thing is, we’ve become sort of constitutional couch potatoes. I mean, the Congress just gave the president despotic powers, and you could hear the yawn across the country as people turned to, you know, Dancing with the Stars. I mean, it’s otherworldly."

The law the President signed is the kind of shit that, in a real democracy, would cause citizens to be rioting in the streets, daring the government to invoke the law against them. It's the kind of thing that ought to shut the nation down because of the convulsive revulsion of the people, a massive expectoration of unified disgust at what a group of Republicans has allowed to happen. Nothing of the sort will happen here, though.

Americans will desperately cling to those lies that make their lives easier. It's like when you know, with all your being, that your lover is fucking around on you, despite all her protestations of devotion and monogamy. It's just simpler, at the end of the day, to suck it up and pretend that her body is yours and yours alone. For most Americans, if their neighbor or lawn guy gets picked up by Homeland Security and his family cannot find out why, it's just less taxing on the mind to think, "Goddamn, Jorge or Omar must've done something, and, really, did I really know him that well?" Even when it's not Jorge or Omar. Even when it's Johnny All-Star, maybe a blond-haired, blue-eyed blogger. Even then most of us would comfort ourselves thinking, maybe not articulating it this way, but still, "Bush knows best; Bush knows best." Even as poll after poll suggests how much we despise him, it's just easier.

Yesterday, Alberto Gonzales, Igor to Cheney's Dr. Frankenstein, "answered" "questions" from the "public" about the MCA. Most of it was the same bullshit you've heard from just about every Republican opening his or her mouth on the topic. But when Gonzales was asked if he was proud of the act (in a pretty confrontational question), Gonzales answered, "I am very proud of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, and every American should share that pride." Share the love. Gonzales was practically licking his red rocket over the Act: "Future generations will look back and commend us for recognizing the threat of terrorism and taking every possible step -consistent with American values and the rule of law- to defeat it." Of course, the act pretty much allows a President to detain anyone who isn't proud of it. Gonzales went out of his way a couple of times to say the act doesn't apply to Americans, but, fuck, c'mon. Not after you've already detained a couple of Americans.

When Bush signed the MCA, he gave a little speech where he made feints at specificity in relation to the "good" the CIA's near-death experience interrogations have done. He said evil sounding names whose invocation made one think of facial hair and olive skin. He said, "The CIA program helped us identify terrorists who were sent to case targets inside the United States, including financial buildings in major cities on the East Coast. And the CIA program helped us stop the planned strike on U.S. Marines in Djibouti, a planned attack on the U.S. consulate in Karachi, and a plot to hijack airplanes and fly them into Heathrow Airport and Canary Wharf in London." Gonzales reiterated these triumphs of torture.

But here's the thing: we just have their word for it. On everything. No wonder these motherfuckers are opposed to habeas corpus. Show the body? Fuck that. How about showing a single thread of evidence that demonstrates our "new" methods of interrogation have led to anything that the old, tired ones couldn't have obtained?

Essentially, what Bush and Gonzales have said is that American military law, the treaties we have abided by, and our entire goddamned judicial system is so weak, that it coddles criminals, that to be tried and sentenced, or even to be charged, is merely liberal weakness. In the end, Bush is saying, to truly love your country, you better be willing to undermine its civic foundations, you better be willing to vest power in a single leader for the duration of a "new kind of war," as Gonzales called it. Yes, this war on "terror" is different. Yes, certain powers have been granted to Presidents in more traditional wars, wars with nations and armies, and, above all, clear objectives and certain end.

To those who would support the Bush administration and the act, which, as Jonathan Turley said made "a fundamental change [in] who we are as a country," we can pull out that old conservative line, "America - love it or leave it."

10/18/2006

In Brief: A Whole Buncha Stupid in One Place: Bill O'Reilly Interviews President Bush:Yeah, yeah, the whole jack-off fest is still going on, with O'Reilly handing out bits of it at a time like he's feeding pigeons. But so far, here's the stupidest things said in the firsttwo parts of the interview between the Leader o' the Free World and the Duke of Falafel:

1. When O'Reilly asked Bush why 60 percent of the public opposes the war, Bush said, "Because they want us to win. They believe — they are wondering whether or not we have the plans in place to win. They want to know whether or not we have the flexibility on the ground to constantly meet the enemy." So, like because we want to win, we want to get out.

2. Along with that logic, Bush also says the American people are pussies: "I can understand why there's frustration, because the enemy knows that killing innocent people will create a sense of frustration and they know that they know America. They know we are a conscience-driven people that value life. And the more people they destroy and the more innocent lives that are destroyed, the more likely it is we will retreat in their way of thinking." Yep, killing innocent people makes Americans want to run the other way. God, how loathsome we are.

3. You can take the man off the fake ranch, but you can't take the fake ranch off the man. Bush said, "As you know, we picked up a fellow named Khalid Sheik Mohammed. Intelligence folks believe or suspect that he was a person that masterminded the 9/11 attacks." It wasn't torture. Just a fellow having his nuts vice-smashed by folks.

4. When O'Reilly asked Bush about defining torture, Bush got all pissy once again: "We don't talk about techniques. And the reason we don't talk about techniques is because we don't want the enemy to be able to adjust. We're in a war...one thing is that you can rest assured we're not going to talk about the techniques we use in a public forum. No matter how hard you try because I don't want the enemy to be able to adjust their tactics if we capture them on the battlefield." Motherfucker sticks to a talking point like a barnacle sticks to a whale.

10/17/2006

A Quick and Easy Test to Determine Where You Stand on the Iraq War:Let's say we line up, oh, hell, a couple hundred thousand American soldiers, fine men and women in combat uniform, officers, non-coms, grunts, and we put them on TV. Then George W. Bush walks in with a loaded glock. Now let's say that the President puts the gun to the temple of the first soldier and says, "If I shoot this Army private dead, there's a chance America will be victorious and democracy will bring peace to Iraq. Do you want me to do it?" There's no guarantees, though - just the chance. What would you say?

For the sake of argument here, let's say that you answer, "Yes, it's worth a soldier for the chance for peace in Iraq." So George W. Bush shoots the soldier in the temple and turns to his advisors, who check reports and, no, still no peace.

Then the President says, "If I cut off one limb or the genitals of the next ten soldiers, there's a chance America will be victorious and democracy will bring peace to Iraq. Do you want me to do it?" What would you say?

For the sake of argument here, let's say that you answer, "Yes, it's worth ten wounded soldiers for the chance at peace in Iraq." So George W. Bush cuts off arms, legs, testicles, and turns to his advisors, who check reports and, no, still no peace.

Then the President says, "If I beat the next ten soldiers in the head with a hammer so that their brains are damaged, there's a chance America will be victorious and democracy will bring peace to Iraq. Do you want me to do it?" What would you say?

For the sake of argument here, let's say that you answer, "Yes, it's worth ten brain-damaged soldiers for the chance at peace in Iraq." So George W. Bush uses a hammer to crack the skulls of the next ten soldiers and turns to his advisors, who check reports and, no, still no peace.

Then the President starts the cycle all over again. He places the gun to the temple of the next soldier.

How many soldiers would you let George W. Bush shoot dead? One? 3000? More? How many would you let him injure? 10? 20,000? More?

If you think the test is biased, unfair, and overly emotional, then you haven't been paying attention. For, really, and come on, is the current U.S. policy in Iraq any more wishful than a lottery of death and mutilation.

Feel free to play with friends. For big fun, substitute Iraqis and multiply by a couple hundred.

10/16/2006

Liberty Sunday, Icky Gays, and Prayer, Prayer, Prayer:Sweet motherfuckin' Jesus, we members of the Family Research Council's Super-Duper Prayer Team have been ordered to do us some big-time prayerification. The Rude Pundit joined the FRCSDPT under a nom de rude, and every week he receives his kneeling orders through the secular magic of e-mail. And what's stuck in FRC President Tony "I'm Psycho About Queers" Perkins craw this week is a constant: faggotry. Faggoty faggots faggoting up the place. In his letter to the Super-Duper Prayer Team, Perkins says, "Reporters have learned that 'a network of gay staffers and gay members protect each other...' One 'gay' insider said '[M]aybe now the social conservatives will realize one reason why their agenda is stalled on Capitol Hill.'" Perkins has questions about the rampant ass-fucking on the Hill: "How large and influential is this network? What role has it played in stalling pro-family agenda?"

Echoing the President's rhetoric on Iraqistanalqaeda, since we live in a time of such a lack of subtlety, Perkins couches this all in terms of another of the endless battles for civilization we're engaged in: "One thing is for sure - the ideological clash between hedonistic secularists and Americans who draw their political values from moral law - will continue until one side or the other prevails. Battles over these issues are being waged in every political jurisdiction in America. Their collective outcome will determine whether our children will inherit religious freedom. Without it, they will have no real freedom at all." There's your choice, Benjamin Franklin, you fat fuck: secular law or moral law. Choose, you wig-wearin' pussies. We know where Perkins comes down. So the FRCSDPT must, you know, "Pray that the whole truth will be discovered and that righteousness will prevail," with a reference to Ephesians 5:11-13, a kind of fascinating couple of verses about the evils of secrecy, which, and why not, seem more applicable to the Bush administration than to the alleged cabals of cockgobblers surrounding it.

But don't you get it, people? In case you don't, yesterday was another gathering, Liberty Sunday, where pissy, priggish evangelicals can get their prayer on and intermingle in the barely sustainable queer tension of talking about gay sex with like-minded evangelicals. 'Cause, apparently, if gays get married, now it's actually gonna cause churches to burst into flames and ministers to tear off their own genitals in front of their congregations, who will roll around in the dirt as hidden demons fuck them from behind. There was "Bishop" Wellington Boone, who has previously unironically called gays "faggots," saying, "If you're in the closet, get out of the closet and let God deal with you." There was Massachusetts Governor and possible presidential candidate Mitt Romney gettin' right with the base and bashing gay marriage.

The tautology of such virulent opposition to gay marriage (or civil unions or anything that horribly binds two people of the same sex together) is such a mindfuck. Seriously, can anyone explain how gay unions threatens the freedom of religion? Will God just say, "Oh, fuck you people" and only give his graces to distant Martians? Is there any issue on the right (Iraq, estate taxes) that can be rationally explained? One presumes that the word "homosexual" is supposed to still matter. It ain't much. But, in this savage election season, dragging the queers behind the church bus is about all they've got.

10/13/2006

Why Michelle Malkin Ought To Be Caged Like a Rabid Shih-Tzu (Buddies Edition):In her increasingly desperate attempt to make herself into some kind of media darling, hideously deformed, incessantly snarling she-beast Michelle Malkin has been making shitty little videos with crappy commentary and putrescent You Tube-level production values for Hot Air. Now, she's invited "friends" over to participate in a take on ABC's celebration of crazed caffeinated bitchery, The View. Malkin calls it The Vent (at least on her website), and, see, her oh-look-we're-so-goddamn-clever take on it is to reverse what she sees as the political dynamic of The View and have three conservatives and a liberal. The conservatives would be Malkin, blogstress of doom Mary Katherine Ham, and creepy LaShawn Barber. The liberal would be hottie-McHottie Kirsten Powers (who actually writes smart stuff for The American Prospect and does qualify for the name "liberal" despite her presence on Fox "News").

The setting is a living room that looks straight out of the porn film set catalog, with a big vinyl couch that can be easily wiped clean. And, indeed, with all the sexual tension between Malkin, who sits there with that "I hate myself and I've been violated" body language," and Powers, it might have been time to break out the spray bottle and disinfect that furniture. Malkin is the mistress of ceremonies, with her lips so chapped as if she's sucked so much white conservative cock that she owns stock in Chapstick.

And, oh, boy, oh, boy, how they get it going with the Mark Foley scandal. Barber talks about how she's a conservative who wants Hastert to resign, Ham talks about how she doesn't think it's a big deal, Powers asks a stupid question and gets a stupid answer, and Malkin rolls her cartoonish eyes at the whole affair. Well, fuck, at least she got the political depth of The View right.

Then the women have loads of fun talking about those crazy fans who edit videos of them for You Tube or send them lots of e-mail. Race traitor LaShawn Barber complains that people call her a race traitor. Ham, who looks like she's leading the "Most Likely To Use This Set For Porn" voting, giggles about how some have set her to music. Malkin says something and who the fuck cares. Powers, who has barely spoken all seven minutes, says she gets e-mail that calls her hot, which is odd, considering that she's hot.

In the ultimate demonstration of female empowerment, they all end the show by agreeing that it'd be fun to go to the gun range together for an episode. Ah, yes, isn't it nice that what these (mostly) conservative women really want is a penis substitute they can grab onto.

A pointless exercise in pointless glory-seeking that'll be sadly entertaining to very sad people.

10/12/2006

George Bush and the Chili-Dog-Eating Press Conference:Let us say, and why not, that yesterday George Bush, President of the United States, decided at the last minute that he was hungry for some chili dogs. In fact, he was so hungry for chili dogs that he invited the White House press corps to a hastily arranged press conference. And then, after telling the gathered fine members of the media about how super-terrific the economy is, how mean ol' Kim Jong-Il is, and how splendiferous amazing Iraq is, he finished his prepared remarks by having Chief of Staff Josh Bolten bring out a giant silver platter of fresh-made chili dogs, all steamy and chili and cheese covered. Then George Bush told the reporters for the many fine publications and networks, "Ya'll ask me questions while I show you how many chili dogs I can eat."

So, someone like Terry Hunt from AP could ask a question about one of the most important issues of our time, something like, "Is your administration to blame for letting North Korea get this far?" And George Bush would chow down on that tube meat, chili pouring down his shirt, cheese stretching out of his mouth, and he'd say, "Goddamn, these are good chili dogs. Spicy, but not too much. Glad I hired a team of special chili dog chefs from Tyler, Amarillo, and Waco to cook these for me." And then he'd finish one chili dog and immediately grab another.

Perhaps a reporter might try another issue, a way of finding out when our seemingly endless engagement in Iraq might have some conceivable end, maybe asking, "Do you feel in some way that there is some shift going on in terms of the general support for the war in Iraq, and your strategy specifically?" By that point, George Bush would probably have gone through six or seven chili dogs, still chowing strong. He'd call out to his Chief of Staff, "Hey, Bolthead, bring me a glass of water. I'm gonna show America that it's my job to show everyone that no Asian man can eat more chili dogs than the President." And then he'd start dipping chili dogs in the water to make them easier to swallow, shoveling those bad boys in his stuffed maw, chili and water and crumbs coating his face, his hands, his suit.

The reporters might sigh, they might want to give up, walk away, turn their backs on this display, but more than likely they'd just figure they may as well keep trying, maybe even challenging the rhetoric of the admnistration, perhaps with a question like, "Do you think the administration and our government runs a risk of looking feckless to the world by issuing these kinds of warnings regularly without response from the countries?"

And at that point, George Bush might pause, with a distressed look on his face, grabbing his stomach. "Oh, damn," he'd say. "Condi warned me that chili does this to me. I gotta rip one." And then he'd drop his pants and turn his ass to the microphone to release what he believed would be a huge, stinky fart, but in the middle of expelling gas, Bush would start blowing shit out of his ass, blowing a shit storm of chili all over the reporters, over their nice suits and outfits, over their equipment, the leader of the free world having explosive diarrhea in front of, hell, on the media and the nation. When he was done, he'd say, "Well, guess this is over. Thanks for your interest. But I gotta go wipe my ass." And then he'd exit, dripping shit behind him, shuffling out with his pants around his ankles.

Karl Rove would realize, of course, how horribly wrong it had all gone. He tried to convince the President just to eat plain hot dogs, but Bush had to go with the chili. Rove would make a phone call, to a specialist in these matters. And perhaps as a result, a small plane with a semi-well-known athlete piloting it would crash into a couple of apartments in New York City. Then everyone would forget about the display they had just seen at the White House.

10/11/2006

Dispatches From This Savage Season:Here's some advice about moral equivalency for Republican Christopher Shays, a putatively moderate Republican from Connecticut whose probably going to be swept away in the coming "Destroy All Republican Incumbents" tide, and who, in a fit of anger at Ted Kennedy's campaigning for his opponent and the Democrats' call for Dennis Hastert to spend more time at the Yorkville, Illinois, Dairy Queen, where he can ask teenage boys if they want a spoonful of his Blizzard, said, "I know the speaker didn't go over a bridge and leave a young person in the water, and then have a press conference the next day. Dennis Hastert didn't kill anybody":

Sure, sure, it seems, one can be certain, to yer Michelle Malkin-types, that it's "ooh, snap" for Shays. But, you know, it doesn't fucking matter if Ted Kennedy was a serial killer whose M.O. was to drive women in his car off bridges, drown them, fuck their corpses, bring them back to the Kennedy Cave, reanimate them, fuck them again, and then drown them one more time by driving them off a bridge. It has no bearing at all on whether or not Dennis Hastert should be Speaker of the House. But it sure makes a cute little pick-up line if you wanna bang Ann Coulter, and it shows us just how low things can go in this savage election season.More on the Rude Pundit in Cookeville, Tennessee:Several people have asked, "Where the fuck's the Backdoor Playhouse?" which is where the Rude Pundit will be doing a preview of his new monologue, The Road to Rude, along with folk rocker Addie Brownlee in the "Cancel Your Grandpa's Vote" show at 8 p.m. on Thursday, October 12. It's Building #3 on the campus map, 805 Quadrangle.

Travel Day, But Still Time For a Smack or Two:The Rude Pundit is sitting here at an airport, on his way to Cookeville, Tennessee where he'll give an audience a preview of his upcoming show, The Road To Rude (that's tomorrow night at the Backdoor Playhouse on the campus of Tennessee Tech University at 8 p.m., with singer Addie Brownlee). In line with his shoes off, he watched as two security agents discussed whether or not a jar of pesto a woman had constituted a liquid or gel. They finally decided it was solid enough not to be of worry to anyone but the very lactose intolerant.

So just a brief note or two here, maybe more later, certainly more tomorrow, on the ongoing state of fucktardery in which we exist:Bush Campaigns For Insanely Conservative Mac Collins:This'd be one of those campaign stops where Bush bizarrely and with no sense of irony said that if Democrats get into power, they're going to create spending without paying for it. Mac Collins is a former rep from Georgia running against the not-quite as bugfuck insane Democrat Jim Marshall. Collins tried to portray the homophobic, anti-abortion, save the burning flags Marshall as a crazed liberal run amok, in one ad saying, "Jim Marshall voted with his liberal leader Nancy Pelosi and voted to waste our tax dollars printing election ballots in Spanish...Muchas Gracias, Señor Jim Marshall."

So George Bush is campaigning for someone who believes that ballots shouldn't be bilingual. Maybe it's a way to ensure Hispanic-American votes are so confused that Collins'll actually get some. But, fuck, with how gerrymandered the district is, it might not even matter.

10/10/2006

David Frum Is Nuts:The Rude Pundit has often wondered, especially as the cost of the Iraq war approaches the half-trillion mark, how much it would have cost to just buy Saddam Hussein out of power. Really. If Saddam had said, "Okay, you know what? Howzabout $10 billion for me and $1 billion each for my two sons and here's a list of about 100 people who get ten million each," would it have been so wrong to write the checks, maybe even have spread it out over time, like some lottery winnings, so that the vicious bastard couldn't back out? At the time it would have seemed outrageous, but history is a cruel bitch, and it now seems like a fuckin' bargain. Sure, sure, you could argue, it sets a bad precedent, others will blackmail the United States, we shouldn't be in the business of "rewarding" dictators, and blah, blah, fuckin' blah. 'Cause you could also argue, perhaps more effectively, that it sets a bad precedent to start a war based on a lie that's on the fast track to 3000 Americans and untold tens of thousands of Iraqis, with no plan to secure the peace. If you'd bought Hussein out of office, all you'd've had to worry about was keeping the peace. Hell, Bush would have fucked it up anyways.

Now, Kim Jong-Il's pissant nuke is, among other scarier things, a cry for help. Not just mental health help for a nutzoid dictator of a decimated country, a pathetic monomaniacal boy who is so overcompensating for his lack of stature that he has to show everyone in the area his little missle so we can all be so fucking impressed. No, it's also a cry for attention. And, like a toddler holding a butcher knife to his own throat, we probably oughta be gentle and bribe it away from him. Start by, oh, fuck, why not bilateral talks. Just for the fuck of it. Just to see if it works. Then start talkin' the cash money. Naive? Yeah, but the sophistication of bombs and bullying has worked so well in the last few years.

Like the fuckin' right wing, though, man. They're so caught up in the idea of punishing those who are less privileged than them that they wanna fuck up North Korea (and try to fuck with China). Take David Frum, he of the National Review, he who co-wrote with Richard Perle a book about how to crush the world and re-shape it, he who said in January 2004 on the Today show, "Afghanistan was a success. Iraq was a success," he who opined to Bill O'Reilly that same month, "At every decisive moment in this war, President Bush has made the right calls." He now has set his beady eyes on North Korea and declared that it's time to fuck some shit up.

Writing in the New York Timestoday, Frum says that a nukey North Korea means it's time to "end humanitarian aid" to that starving nation, to ramp up the Star Wars missle "defense" production, and to let Japan become nukey 'cause that'll fuck with the minds of the Chinese, who deserve, Frum goes on, to be pimp-slapped for the North Korean nukiness.

Frum concludes, "Countries like North Korea and Iran seek nuclear weapons because they imagine that those weapons will enhance their security and power...when negotiation fails, as it has failed in North Korea and is failing in Iran, rogue regimes must be made to suffer for their dangerous nuclear ambitions." 'Cause, you know, pissing off the entire Muslim world ain't enough for these idiot utopian neocons. And where in the annals of bugfuck insanity has starving a starving people actually led to the desired effect? Iraq?

Fuck David Frum, who with Iraq joyfully bounced like the head cheerleader getting fucked doggie style behind the bleachers by the high school quarterback, so full of himself even when he was proved objectively wrong in virtually everything he said about Iraq, shit like "The shooting should be over within just a very few days from when it starts," which he wrote in the February 24, 2003 National Review , or this, from an Australian television interview in August 2005, "I know Ahmed Chalabi not well but reasonably well. He is not a perfect man. But in a country full of very, very imperfect people, I think he is and always has been our best hope as somebody who shares democratic ideals, has political effectiveness, understands the system, is committed to a united and democratic Iraq."

Listening to David Frum talk about foreign policy is like listening to Jeffrey Dahmer talk about cooking. He may be some kind of expert in making what's in the pot, but would you dare eat it?

10/09/2006

Rep. Patrick McHenry Channels Kafka For Blitzer:Yes, yes, Joseph K. would be laughing his ass off at Republican Patrick "Give Me Unsubstantiated, Random Accusations or Give Me Death" McHenry because it would all seem so, so familiar. CNN's Wolf Blitzer asked McHenry a perfectly reasonable question of whether or not the Congressman had any evidence that some unholy menage of Nancy Pelosi, Rahm Emmanuel, and George Soros were responsible for, if the contorted reasoning can be understood, not revealing what they might have known about Mark Foley's one-handed IMing until just before an election despite the fact that Republicans weren't revealing it either. McHenry's response: "Do you have any evidence that they weren’t involved?"

Boo-ya. How do you answer that? 'Cause, realistically, at this point in time, sitting here, tap-tap-tappin' away at this with two hands, the Rude Pundit can't really think of any evidence that he wasn't involved in hiding the Foley e-mails. And, goddamn, when you get right down to it, he can't think of any evidence that he wasn't involved in sleepwalking this morning and killing the hoboes that occasionally pass out in the street nearby. Sure, sure, there may be no hobo blood on his hands, but, still, and all, that doesn't not prove nothing. Hell, let's make this fun: The Rude Pundit can't prove that he didn't have sex with Rachel Bilson last night.

In fact, fuck it. Since Republicans have proven that they can just make up whatever shit they want without producing a single shred of evidence, everyone can claim they had sex with Rachel Bilson last night. Until each of us goes under oath, with lie detectors attached to our 'nads and CIA interrogators watching the needle on the chart. And who gives a fuck what Rachel Bilson has to say about it.

Then, when McHenry says, "It’s a question, Wolf. The question remains, were they involved? And if they were not involved, they need to say clearly. And it’s a question. It’s not an accusation," the Rude Pundit can say, "Accuse away, motherfucker."

The Real Bitch Slap Was Over on ABC:Rahm Emmanuel, who, at this point, in our post-Foley autumn, is probably thinking about all the blow jobs he owes Howard Dean for putting in place a 50-state strategy on winning the midterms, fucking eviscerated Republican Adam Putnam on This Week. It got to the point where you just felt guilty for how giddy it made you feel. And the Rude Pundit giggled like a schoolgirl. Or Rachel Bilson when you tickle her left nipple with the tip of your tongue.

10/06/2006

Ten Pranks You Can Play on a Child Predator:In honor of Matt Drudge's claim that the initial IM exchanges between an ex-page and Mark Foley "were part of an online prank that by mistake got into the hands of enemy political operatives," an allegation that, while slapped down by the ex-page's attorney, was handled with masturbatory glee by the anxious right wing punditry:

1. You can put a whoopee cushion on the child predator's seat in the House of Representatives. When he sits on it and creates a fart sound, he will still be a child predator.

2. You can pretend to be a lobbyist and shake the child predator's hand with a joy buzzer. When he jumps back from the jolt, he will still be a child predator.

3. You can offer to donate to his campaign and point to a quarter you've glued to the floor. When he struggles to pick up the quarter, he will still be a child predator.

4. You can balance a bucket of water over the door to his office where his computer is. When he opens the door and gets drenched, he will still be a child predator.

5. You can meet him at a fundraiser and offer him a drink containing a fake ice cube with a plastic fly inside it. When he reacts disgustedly, he will still be a child predator.

6. You can ask him to open a can of peanuts in the Rotunda. When cloth snakes come springing out and make him scream, he will still be a child predator.

7. You can unscrew the top of the salt in the Members' Dining Room. When he pours salt all over his fish sticks, he will still be a child predator.

8. You can ring his doorbell at his DC home and run away. When he answers and looks around perplexed, he will still be a child predator.

9. You can tell him that the United States needs to go to war with Iraq because of weapons of mass destruction. When he votes in favor of your war, he will still be a child predator.

10. You can IM him your dick size. When he IMs back how much he wants to fuck you, even as you laugh with your friends at your clever prank, he will still, at the end of the day, be a child predator.

10/05/2006

Someone's Not Happy That the Rude Pundit's Coming To Middle Tennessee:So, as he's said before, the Rude Pundit's gonna be doing a preview (not a full-blown production) of his upcoming show The Road To Rude at the Backdoor Playhouse in Cookeville, Tennessee (yes, make all the jokes you want about the name). He'll be on a bill with Addie Brownlee, a kickass folk rocker, and we're calling the evening the "Cancel Your Grandpa's Vote" show. It's at 8 p.m. on Thursday, October 12. Tix are just ten bucks, or five bucks for students.

Why Cookeville? Because the Rude Pundit's director, Mark H. Creter, is a professor at Tennessee Tech University, where the Backdoor Playhouse happens to be. Creter has faced down mighty bullshit in producing The Vagina Monologues and other controversial stuff in his conservative Christian town. It's why the National Council of Teachers of English gave him its Intellectual Freedom Award a couple of years ago.

But not everyone's happy about the Rude Pundit's imminent arrival in middle Tennessee. Here's a bit from a letter that was sent to members of the TTU community: "I am writing to express my disappointment at the scheduling of The Rude Pundit on Thursday, October 12 at the Backdoor Playhouse. My disagreement is not of a political nature, but rather I oppose the sponsorship and hosting of lewd and sexually explicit performances by public institutions. Public political debates have long had an important outlet on our nation's college and university campuses. However, the website http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/ contains no material that qualifies as political debate, even in its lowest form...

"The problem is not that the performance will be 'politically sensitive'. Politically sensitive topics need to be discussed in great detail, especially on college campuses. The problem is not even that the event will satire and make fun of one politcal party or set of ideas; humor can be a great tool for making a point. I oppose the event on the grounds that public institutions should not sponsor and host lewd and sexually explicit material. I also challenge you to find anything 'instructive' on the website mentioned above...

"Finally, I ask, would you take your mother to see it?"

Leaving out the obvious (not everything has to be judged by the standards of one's mother), and leaving out the myriad ways in which he has instructed readers in the various and thrilling methods of inserting cocks or strap-ons into aching orifices, the Rude Pundit will invite the letter writer to the show. There, we can hug and share My Little Pony stories, and then the Rude Pundit will go onstage and talk about skullfucking the corpse of Ken Lay.

Democrats Need To Do It For the Children:When it comes to the real rough and tumble, down in the gutter, biting the ears off and gouging the eyes out battle that is politics, Democrats have, for most of the last thirty or so years, been a tremulous bunch. Once the word "liberal" came to mean "cocksucking whoremonger with AIDS," thanks to a particularly well-crafted long game by conservatives, Democrats spent most of their time batting down the slings and arrows as those fuckers come at them full speed from the other side. In other words, for every James Carville, there's ten Karl Rove/Lee Atwater-types. Mostly, Democrats have had to rely on people like Bob Shrum, a consultant who couldn't find his asshole if it was being reamed by a horny buffalo. (Yes, yes, we could get all weepy Joe Klein-y and bemoan the power of political consultants, but, fuck it, you play with the toys you've got.)

Now Democrats have been given a gift, on a goddamn gold platter, served up like Nero's favorite fuck boy holding a giant diamond between his thighs for the emperor at a weekend orgy. The greatest thing about this gift is that it's ever so likely that Democrats won't even have to try to mangle the spin on the Mark Foley scandal. It's metastasizing at a speed that'd make pancreatic cancer say, "Goddamn, that's fast." The first ad is already out, one by a Democratic candidate for Congress that directly addresses the Republicans' enabling of Mark Foley's masturbatory fantasies. It's from Patty Wetterling, a Minnesotan running for the House.

Her TV spot, "Crimes," is so ham-fisted, thuddingly literal, and open to charges of exaggeration that it actually obfuscates the most important thing about Wetterling: she's walked the walk and talked the talk on child exploitation and safety for years. Jesus Christ, her son was kidnapped in 1989 and has never been found. Just like the very presence of Iraq war vets running for Congress against the President who sent them there evokes more than words, so does the presence of mother and activist Patty Wetterling says everything about the Foley scandal. At this point, the media and political context takes care of almost all of the meaning.

From now until the election, any mention of the word "child" in a campaign context is automatically going to invoke Foley and the Republicans. So Democrats, if they play their cards right, can take advantage of this without directly saying, "Republicans bad - Republicans hide perverts - you don't like Republicans." See, that falls right into Karl Rove's hand and the developing meme that Democrats are in some way responsible for Foley. See this week's act of cuntistry by Ann Coulter. See all the fucktards who keep on bringing up the case of Gerry Studds, the Democrat who fucked a 17-year old male page decades ago. It's kind of like excusing Watergate because of Teapot Dome.

(By the way, regarding the Studds case, when it came out in 1983 that Studds had had sex with the page, it had been ten years since the incident and, despite what Coulter says in selectively quoting one Washington Post columnist, most people were appalled by the actions of Studds and Republican Dan Crane, who banged a female page. On July 21, 1983, here's what the lead editorial of the Post said: "[I]n engaging in sexual acts with young congressional employees entrusted to their care by parents and teachers and others who believe the congressmen will not misuse them, these men were guilty of a terrible failure of decency and responsibility. They abused their office and they abused their young wards." Ellen Goodman, no conservative bible-thumper wrote, "Congress assumed the role of surrogate parents in the lives of these pages. It behaved instead...'as errant parents.' More than two people in the Capitol forgot that teen-agers still need something special from their elders. They need protection." Studds and Crane decided not to resign, were censured by the House, and let the voters make the choice as to whether or not to expel them from office.)

Here's why one day the Democrats will send Shrum and Donna Brazile and all those idiots out to pasture where they can chew cud and moo away their last days of uselessness, and why they will call upon the Rude Pundit to show them the light and path to righteousness and endless power: Let the word go forth that Democrats are making this campaign about the children. And that can take on all kinds of guises: ending the Iraq war so that children don't, you know, die, and so children in military families can be reunited after the constant extensions of the missions of some brigades. It can be about schools and health care. And, by inference, without even mentioning their names, it can be about protecting them from Republicans like Mark Foley, like Dennis Hastert, like John Boehner, men who would chew up the children and spit them out like so much fresh meat in order to maintain power. And when Republicans bring up national security, one word, "children," will make it all meaningless. For if the children aren't safe in their bedrooms from the politicians who are supposed to protect them, why even bother with the terrorists?

See how simple that is? It always will be. And it doesn't get into the queasy politics of attack and negativity that Democrats are condemned for anyway ('cause, you know, only Republicans are allowed to run negative ads). All smiles and positivity and inference, man, just inference and evocation. ''Cause let's say two people have been given that bright, shiny jewel as a present. Who are you gonna respect more? The one who dresses it up with more gold and silver and calls glaring attention to it? Or the one who puts it on a chain and just lets it hang there?

10/04/2006

Democrats Are Played, Again and Again and...:Last week, before we got all Foleytioed and lost our attention spans, the great and terrible debate over torture and habeas corpus in the Senate went a little something like this: Republicans were mewing and growling like an alley cat in heat getting its kitty cooz fucked by the local toms. Democrats were cowering in the corner, licking themselves, hoping no one noticed them. Sure, sure, they made nice little speeches about rights, about tradition, about the Constitution, about the rule of law. And in the end, even though most of them voted against it, they decided not to filibuster the bill because, they said, they didn't want Republicans to be able to say they were weak on terrorists. Hey, they said, we'll show we're tough by abandoning our principles and giving the President exactly what he wants. Look, they said, we'll go ahead and let George Bush continue his perverse attacks on the human body in the name of security, we'll forego nine centuries of legal doctrine. Just, please, please, they intoned, don't say we're timid or we might cry.

And not a goddamn week later, here's the Democrat-enabled President Bush, a man who has the power to jail whoever the fuck he wants for an indefinite period of time with no charges, a man who gets to look at a menu of violent techniques and point out which ones he declares legal, speaking at a fundraiser in California: "The Democrats are the party of cut and run. Ours is a party that has got a clear vision and says we will give our commanders and troops the support necessary to achieve that victory in Iraq... the Democrats have said they share our goals. But when it comes time to vote, they consistently oppose giving our personnel the tools they need to protect us. Time and time again, the Democrats want to have it both ways. They talk tough on terror, but when the votes are counted, their softer side comes out... If they feel we are safer without this [CIA nut-twisting interrogation] program, the Democrats in the United States Senate need to explain to the American people which of the attacks that the CIA program stopped would they have been willing to let go forward...Democrats have voted time and again to deny our personnel the tools they need to protect you. Republicans are giving you the tools they need -- giving our folks the tools they need to keep this country safe."

Mmmm, isn't compromise tasty? Suck on that sweet ass covering. The next time Joe Biden gets his patented teeth-grit of outrage over interrogation abuses and Geneva Convention violations, tell him to look in the mirror while he's workin' that combover.

Again and again and again, Democrats forget the rule that Karl Rove lives by: "Everything they do is wrong; everything we do is right." And that's right down the fuckin' line. Every cloud has a silver lining. Every wet spot is a chance to gather DNA. Every fuck-up is an opportunity. Every sign of weakness must be exploited. That's because it's what fires up the base. It's gonna happen on the Mark Foley debacle. Right now everyone's running around without Rove's black leather gloved slap of guidance. But soon, Rove will figure out how to spin this into something to attack Democrats with.

And it's developing. Fat fuck Rush Limbaugh, with fat fuck Denny Hastert's complicity, is already calling the revelation of Mark Foley's unquenchable need to spank the monkey while IMing adolescent boys part of a "coordinated assault" by Democrats. The Family Research Council is already shakin' Jesus's holy bloody fist at "pro-homosexual political correctness" that ignores what the FRC and other bugfuck insane groups call the "link" between the gays and child abuse. Watch the way this gets spun to how Democratic support of gay-love caused Mark Foley to want to bugger the children and if you don't want more children e-fucked, you have to vote for Republicans.

Democrats keep acting as if they are dealing with honorable men and women across the aisle in Congress. Instead, they need to behave as if all that exists over there is a hellscape of pedophiles and torturers. And act accordingly.

10/03/2006

Because It Needs To Be Said: Matt Drudge Protests Way Too Much:Now, why in the world would not-so-closeted gay guy Matt "I Stole This Hat From Walter Winchell's Skeletal Remains" Drudge defend admitted creep Mark Foley? Why would Drudge blame the teenagers who Foley was virtual cruising over internet messaging? What reason, and there aren't many to choose from, could Drudge have for calling the boys "these impressionable, young 17 year-old beasts" who were "egging the Congressman on" by revealing bits and pieces of their masturbatory lives? Can anyone say why Drudge would actually say, "I'm just saying from reading these instant messages, this wasn't coerced. I mean, this wasn't somebody -- the kid was having fun with this. These LOLs throughout the entire conversation, these 'laugh out louds,'" as if "LOL" excuses Foley?

Huh. Now the Rude Pundit's not saying that Matt Drudge is a pathetic loser who trawls the internet for young men so he can pretend that the adolescent mindlessly tapping away on the other end really loves him. The Rude Pundit's not saying that Matt Drudge weepingly jacks off all over his giant LCD monitor to the MySpace pages he's directed to by the high school boys, playing the new Evanescence or some My Chemical Romance on his iPod so he can believe he's one of them, Peter Fuckin' Pan instead of Matt Drudge, bottom feeder toady and water carrier for the conservative right who would abandon him faster than he can ejaculate to an IM about naked adolescent ass, LOL. No, no, the Rude Pundit's not saying that Drudge is defending Foley and attacking the teens because of this. But the Rude Pundit's not saying he's isn't, either.

In Brief: Mark Foley - A Man's Gotta Teach To His Strengths:Lookie what former Representative and wannabe bobber of teenage knobs Mark Foley was doing in April of this year - teaching sixth graders how to avoid people like him on the internet:

For Immediate Release:

Foley Hosts Internet Safety Training For Children At Wellington Landings Middle School

April 21, 2006

WELLINGTON, FL.

Congressman Mark Foley (FL-16) will host internet safety training for more then 350 sixth graders at Wellington Landings Middle School (1100 Aero Club Drive, Wellington) provided by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The program is designed to teach children about the dangers on the internet. Recent national reports have brought attention to the issue. Members of the press are invited to attend.

Monday, April 24th, 2:00 p.m.

WHAT: Internet Safety Training for Children.

WHO: Reps. Mark Foley, Representatives from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and 350 sixth graders.

10/02/2006

Mark Foley and Fellow Republicans Have Tiny Dicks:It's always beautiful when something metaphorical becomes actual, when one looks out of the window and sees a winged pig flapping against the sunset, when one walks outdoors and watches an obese woman singing, when one discovers the Pope shitting in the woods. For, indeed, the entire modus operandi of the Republicans leading this nation can be boiled down to a simple idea: weak men with tiny dicks have to show they're really as big and strong as the guys with the big dicks (this equation, of course, leaves Dick "You Heard My Name" Cheney out, 'cause that fucker's just a cock on legs). You look at anything the Republicans have done and it's all insecure little dick syndrome: the Iraq war? The detainee treatment bill? The bankruptcy "reform" act? You name it, it's got the words "I'm So Ashamed of My Tiny Little Dick" written in fine print on it. Such fealty to one's own insecurities will eventually bring you down.

And now former Representative Mark Foley, a Florida Republican (because, you know, it had to be Florida), has made literal what was metaphorical. In his online chats with teenaged former congressional pages, Foley is obsessed with dick size. Talking to one teenager about the kid's cock, Foley tells him to "get a ruler and measure it for me." The kid responds that he's already done that for him and it's seven and a half inches long. To which Foley says, "ummmmmmmmmmmmmmm...beautiful." In another exchange, he tells a teen, "don't forget to measure." God, how Foley wanted that big teenaged cock in his mouth, in his hand, in his ass. God, how he must have held his own withered, small member in his fingers and wept at its absence from the orifices of the young. Probably better to sublimate it all by supporting a war and torture.

Here's the bottom line on the Foley snowball, a runaway fucker that's heading down a clear mountain path: they knew. Republicans in the leadership and you can sure as shit bet many, many more (Karl Rove, anyone?). They fucking knew. They knew that, while he may not have actually gobbled that unsullied seven-and-a-half-inch cock, that he wanted to, desperately. They knew that he was creeping out the pages, that he was a joke, that predatory old queen who the pages laughed at behind their dorm doors, sharing stories about how much Foley put his hands on them when they talked or invited them to different places. They knew in 2001, and they let him try to innoculate himself by putting him on the forefront of writing and passing legislation making it a federal crime to do the very things he was doing, giving him the shiny imprimatur of Mr. "America's Most Wanted" himself, John Walsh, allowing him to appear on television condemning others even as he condemned himself. They let him remain as chair of the House caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, as if the fox would only eat the grown chickens while guarding the just-hatched in the henhouse.

And, just as importantly, the Republicans showed complete and utter disdain for the people of Foley's district because it was a safe seat in the Congress and because he was a motherfucking cash cow for fellow Republicans, who would suck some of that filthy lucre from Foley's teats. So for two elections they allowed the people of the 16th district in Florida to vote him back to office, 172,858 of 'em in 2002 and 215,563 of 'em in 2004. Yet despite the heat being turned up months ago, they were gonna let them vote for him again, thinking that saying to Foley, "Hey, you know all the shit you write to the boy pages? Cut it out" was enough.

So fuck Mark Foley. Just another tiny-dicked fucker who abused his power and position in obeisance to a sublimated libido that Republican politics would not allow to run rampant and free, another pathetic conservative who denied his true self and destroyed himself for it. This ain't about Foley's online jackin' it to chats with teenaged boys writing about how they fuck their own beds. It's about the people still in power and what they'll do to maintain power.

God, if they would allow tens of thousands of people in Florida to vote for someone they knew was getting his rocks off in a definitely unethical and probably illegal way, what wouldn't they do? If they knew that Mark Foley cut open illegal Ecuadoran immigrants and fucked their still pumping aortas, they'd probably say, "Well, it's not like he's fucking the hearts of voters."